More on the principles of the TEA PARTY and current conservative politics

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

Nation’s Top Conservatives Will Sign Philosophical Declaration of War against Big Government
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
By
Fred Lucas, Staff Writer

President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan during the Inauguration Day
parade, January 20, 1981. (Wikimedia Commons photo

(CNSNews.com) - The nation's top conservative leaders will gather Wednesday at
Collingwood in Alexandria, Va.—a property that was once the site of
George Washington’s River Farm—to sign a document organizers are
calling the Mount Vernon Statement. It is designed to signal that a
united and resurgent conservative movement is declaring philosophical
war against the big government and moral relativism advanced by the
nation’s liberal cultural, academic and political establishments.

The statement emphatically says no to the type of "change" pushed by
political leaders who ignore the Constitution's limits on government
power.

“In recent decades, America’s principles have been undermined and
redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics,” says an
excerpt from the statement. “The self-evident truths of 1776 have been
supplanted by the notion that no such truths exist. The federal
government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is
increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant.

“Some insist that America must change, cast off the old and put on the new,” says the statement. “But where would this lead--forward or
backward, up or down? Isn’t this idea of change an empty promise or
even a dangerous deception?”

“The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American
ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles,”
it says.

The full document will be posted online at www.themountvernonstatement.com after 3 p.m. Wednesday.

The statement was drafted under the auspices of the Conservative Action
Project, a coalition led by Edwin Meese, who served as a top White
House adviser and then attorney general to President Ronald Reagan.
Other leaders of the coalition include L. Brent Bozell III, president
of the Media Research Center (the parent organization of CNSNews.com);
Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner; Americans for Tax Reform
President Grover Norquist; Family Research Council President Tony
Perkins, American Conservative Union President David Keene, Concerned
Women for America President Wendy Wright; Coalition for a Conservative
Majority Chairman Ken Blackwell; former Reagan Domestic Policy Adviser
Ken Cribb; Let Freedom Ring President Colin Hanna, and Al Regnery,
publisher of the American Spectator.

More than 80 prominent conservatives from around the country are expected at Collingwood for Wednesday’s signing ceremony. Among them
will be people prominent for their efforts on behalf of the
conservative cause in economics, social and cultural issues and
national security.

The statement intentionally harkens back to the Sharon Statement of
1960, which was signed at the home of William F. Buckley Jr. in Sharon,
Conn. That statement of conservative principles helped launch an era of
conservative activism that first led to Sen. Barry Goldwater winning
the Republican presidential nomination in 1964 and then to Ronald
Reagan being elected president in 1980.

“The whole purpose of it is to give an updated version of what are the
principles that draw conservatives together,” said Meese, who came with
Reagan from California to the White House in January 1981. “And so it
was felt both that it was appropriate to draw attention to the Sharon
Statement but also to update that in terms of generally how
conservatives think today, which is basically the same principles
restated in what you might call modern language.”

“At this important time, we need a restatement of constitutional
conservatism grounded in the priceless principle of ordered liberty
articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,”
says another excerpt of the statement released by the organizers.

After President Barack Obama’s election along with a Democratic majority Congress in 2008, some commentators argued that conservatism
had perhaps permanently lost its hold on the American electorate and
the American mind. Over the past year, however, the fiscally
conservative Tea Party movement has risen up from the grass roots, and
Republican candidates have won convincing victories in statewide
elections in Virginia, New Jersey and even Massachusetts.

Meese told CNSNews.com that if the Republican Party wants to continue
this winning trend it must heed conservative principles. “The
Republican Party has been successfully when it subscribes to
conservative principles,” said Meese. “You go back to 1980, go back to
1994, those were the guiding principles that provided for Republican
successes.”

While a number of conservative commentators and organizations will be
publishing policy prescriptions this year that they believe can
help lead to conservative victories in 2010, the Mount Vernon Statement
will not be a campaign document that focuses on individual issues or
one election cycle. Rather, it will focus on broad principles, said
Media Research President Brent Bozell.

“It’s a document that we hope is going to serve as a compass for the
movement so that when we have a debate such as, for example, on
socialized health care, there should not be a degree to which
government participates in national health care but whether government
has the authority, the right to interfere in this issue,” Bozell told
CNSNews.com. “If it doesn’t have the specifically enumerated right and
responsibility spelled out in the Constitution, then the federal
government should not be involved period.”

“Rather than worrying about the size of the deficit and the debt, why don’t we start asking questions about the size of the government
itself,” Bozell said. “We need to have that conversation again. Why do
we have a Department of Education? Whatever happened to federalism?
You’re not going to have that debate until you’re grounded in first
principles again.”

When the Sharon Statement was signed, conservatives had only National
Review and Human Events to publicize it, said Bozell. But now
conservative Web sites, talk radio shows, and social media will make it
possible to quickly spread the word to millions about the Mount Vernon
Statement.

“Look at the opportunities today,” said Bozell. “When the statement is
released, I will be able to send it instantly to 540,000 members of the
Media Research Center, grassroots members. The Heritage Foundation
has more than 600,000 members. They will be able to send to their
membership who will receive it in a matter of minutes.”

[Marjorie McEntee]

We are on the March...It's a wonderful thing that is happening in our country today......on the move,back to our roots. GOD BLESS AMERICA